1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to the art of refrigerator doors and, more particularly, to an adjustable retainer assembly for maintaining food containers in a desired storage condition upon a shelf provided in the inner liner portion of a refrigerator door.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
It is widely known in the art to form refrigerator doors with inner liners that incorporate a plurality of shelves upon which various food containers can be stored. In order to aid in preventing food containers placed on such shelves from falling off when the refrigerator door is either opened or closed, it is common practice to provide a wall or retainer member that extends in front of each shelf to prevent tipping of the stored containers. Unfortunately, the positions of such retainer arrangements cannot readily accommodate food items of varying heights which creates a problem when tall food containers are placed on the refrigerator door shelves. Since such containers inherently have a rather high center of gravity, these containers often fall from the shelves when the refrigerator door is opened quickly or closed hard.
In an attempt to solve this known problem, it has become common practice to provide an auxiliary retainer which fits in or snaps onto the front of an inner door liner shelf. It has also been proposed to utilize an adjustable retainer unit which can be shifted in a generally horizontal plane to accommodate food containers of varying widths. An example of the latter known arrangement is exemplified by U.S. Pat. No. 5,160,191. Unfortunately, such known retainers are not vertically adjustable so as to enable repositioning of the retainer based on the particular height of the food container being stored. Therefore, these known retainer arrangements generally suffer from the same drawback in that rather tall food containers placed on the shelf still have a tendency to fall off due to abrupt movements of the refrigerator door.
It has also been heretobefore proposed to pivotally mount a retainer member to a shelf in a refrigerator such that the retainer member can be shifted vertically, although perhaps only to a rather limited degree. The problem with this known type of retainer assembly is that the retainer member tends to obstruct the placement of food containers into and the removal of food containers from the shelf even when tall food containers are not being supported and the retainer member is not needed. In other words, the retainer member always assumes some in-use position and cannot be shifted to a remote non-use position wherein it does not obstruct the placement or removal of the food containers.
Therefore, there exists a need in the art of refrigerators for a retainer assembly for use on a shelf provided on the inner liner of the refrigerator door wherein the retainer assembly is vertically adjustable so that it can assume various vertically spaced in-use positions but which can be readily shifted to a non-use position wherein the retainer assembly provides clear accessibility to the shelf and food containers placed thereon.